20 Ways Meat Packers Reduce Costs from Farm to Table: This Month's Alternative Sponsor at The World's Fair

Long time since we had an alternative sponsor, and just at the time I've been starting to wonder if The World's Fair should remain part of the scienceblogs collective. With the Dow Chemical ads back, we also took note of more recent news on the morally debased position the company takes with respect to its purchase of Union Carbide back in 2001 -- and the responsibilities for the 1984 Bhopal leak that one would assume came with said purchase but, per the Dow spokesman, do not: "A Dow official in Midland, Mich., said the firm did not inherit Union Carbide's liabilities when it acquired the company." That leak, the Washington Post article titled "Indians Pressure Dow on Bhopal Cleanup" reports, "killed at least 3,000 people in the first few days and led to 14,000 deaths overall from illness, according to the government. Survivors contend the toll is 23,000."

It happens that we'd been in meetings with the American Meat Institute (circa 1953) for a few months anyway and, given the above, thought the timing was right for bringing them on board as an alternative sponsor. So today we thank them for their support.

Now, we can't really say how much we appreciate the many benefits meat and meat packing and meat by-products bring us, so we're glad to have the American Meat Institute say it on our behalf. Like the fossil fuels dinosaurs have given to humanity or the ivory elephants have given latter day Hemingway adventurers or the plasma people donate to make those plasma-screen TVs (as is my understanding of it) Meat Packing brings us a wondrous range of our daily bread, so to speak. Why just last weekend, out talking to neighbor Bill about the local sports team and his prospects for getting that coveted under-secretary position on our Homeowner's Association Board ("And then we'll shut down those no-goodnik double-wide baby strollers always blocking the roads!") I longed for some special glue for my marine plywoods, paper, matches, and window shades. I lean over the newly shellacked fence and says to Bill, "Hey Bill, do you have any of that special glue for my marine plywoods, paper, matches, and window shades?" And he shouts back, over the low din of his high-end, two-chamber, spit-fire, yee haw leaf blower, "No, no I don't, but I do have some bone for bone china out in the shed, and I do have rennet for cheese making, and I'll be gosh darn if Suzy doesn't have some chemicals for tires that run cooler in her sewing kit and stearin for making chewing gum and candies and binders for asphalt paving. And, you know what?, I'm almost positive Billy Junior has some cutting oils and other special industrial lubricants left over from last Fall's father-son project day down at the Jaycees." Not sure if I heard him correctly, I shouted back, "But Bill, where could you possibly get all of those things, such products that make American a better place to live in?" And he says to me, God's honest truth, he says to me: "Why, it's all from the American Meat Institute, headquartered in Chicago!"

It's because of that dependability, because of that gumption-filled American virtue, that we are proud to bring the AMI on board as an alternative sponsor for our site. They now proudly stand beside Toxins in our Food, the Grand Hotel Regina, Kaspar Schott's "How to Determine Depth of a Well", Bell Telephone, Encyclopedia Britannica, Cutter Bill, Hungarian cookbooks, and Fellman Shoes.